Broadband keeps disconnecting

I'm trying to help out a friend who is having problems with his broadband connection.His ISP is BTYahoo Broadband and he is connecting via a telephone line and an Alcatel Speedtouch ADSL modem.

Basically his connection to the internet is lost at regular intervals - approximately every fifteen minutes his connection dies and he has to reconnnect. When he reconnnects his connection is then fine and he can browse the web as normal, but again roughly 15 minutes later he will find that his connection is interrupted.

Has anyone else out there had a similar problem ? I wondered whether it might be a phone service such as BT callminder or somesuch that could be causing the problem, but thought best to ask the experts !

If all the settings are correct and you keep dropping the connection it may be due to lack of power to the modem from the USB port. Are there any other items connected through USB? If so disconnect and try again.

If this is the problem then a powered USB hub will sort it for you. Cost about £20.00 j.

I have been getting similar troubles ever since I reinstalled my OS from an image.I have reinstalled the driver,reinstalled Via drivers(this worked last time I had this problem)and still it keeps disconnecting every couple of hours(max)or few minutes,depending on what mood it seems to be in.I emailed my ISP last time I had this prob,they ran several checks on the ADSL side of things(phonecall from BT Engineer asking me to log on to their server)no probs were found,but reinstall of Via 4in 1 cured it for me,so suggest you try it to.

I haven't found what was causing my probs yet,but have just run CyberTweak(click here)and optimised my modems settings,and the repeated disconnections have ceased.I used the "default" values suggested by the prog.